Food Stamps slashed, Handouts to Kochs - anyone paying attention?

Ah! Yes! And the Tea Partiers are going to follow the Dirty Energy Kochs and their Extremist Propaganda!

Please educate yourselves about how the Koch Brothers bought your government and Americans are going hungry because of their GREED, LIES and Extremism.

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David Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries, attends an event at The Economic Club of New York. (photo: Mark Lennihan/AP)

Farm Bill Cuts $8 Billion in Food Stamps, Preserves Handouts to Koch Industries

By Lee Fang, The Nation

08 February 14

fter a conservative-led revolt against the Farm Bill, a five-year congressional funding program for agricultural and hunger programs, a deal will reportedly reach the president's desk on Friday. The final iteration of the bill cuts $8 billion from food stamps, a key demand made by Americans for Prosperity, which aired advertisements and organized opposition to the initial Farm Bill because of the supposed waste of providing food assistance to needy families. Americans for Prosperity is controlled by the billionaire Koch brothers and their cohort. Koch groups claimed the Farm Bill serves "special interests and powerful corporations" over the taxpayers.

 

Yet, the final funding package contains a number of giveaways that benefit Koch Industries' bottom line:

 

• Biomass Subsidies: The Farm Bill preserves $881 million in mandatory spending for biomass energy, a program that Koch Industries' timber subsidiary Georgia-Pacific has used to to extract government subsidies. Georgia-Pacific applied and qualified for the Biomass Crop Assistance Program for its facilities in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Oregon and Florida. Lobbying reports from Koch Industries show that the company has pressured Congress on the Farm Bill, specifically on the BCAP program. Records also show that Koch Industries executive Deborah Baker asked Department of Agriculture officials to expand BCAP forestry eligibility.

 

• New Clean Water Act Exemption: The Farm Bill enacts a measure that ensures runoff of pesticides and other chemicals from forestry sites may not be regulated under the Clean Water Act as industrial pollution. The Farm Bill includes an amendment that would define the "EPA's treatment of forestry operations as non-point sources of pollution under the Clean Water Act." A bipartisan group of legislators sponsored the forestry amendment, which Wild Oregon warns will overturn "a recent court ruling that found that pollution originating from active logging roads be treated similarly to other industrial activities." The group says the amendment poses "a serious risk not just to the [Nestucca River], but to countless other rivers and streams in Oregon that have been damaged by poor logging and road building practices." Koch Industries' Georgia-Pacific signed on with other companies in lobbying for this amendment to the Farm Bill.

 

Koch Industries was also joined by other energy and timber corporations in lobbying for the expansion of biomass energy programs. Timber companies and their trade associations, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, came together to demand the Clean Water Act exemption.

 

Recipients of food stamps, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), had few resources to influence Congress. Although several grocery and convenient store industry groups pushed back against cuts on SNAP, defenders of food stamps were largely outgunned during the debate. Anti-poverty activists say the deep cuts in the food stamp program will amount to a $90 monthly reduction for many families.

MUST READ!

Sen. Elizabeth Warren. (photo: Boston Herald)

Elizabeth Warren Blasts Government Profits on Student Loans

By Associated Press

08 February 14

.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Saturday she is shocked that the federal government is earning an estimated $66 billion in profits from student loans originated between 2007 and 2012.

 

The Democrat from Massachusetts was reacting to a Government Accountability Office report Friday. A previous Congressional Budget Office report estimated that the government will pocket an additional $185 billion in profits on new student loans made over the next 10 years.

 

"This is obscene. The government should not be making $66 billion in profits off the backs of our students," Warren said in a statement. "This report reinforces what we already knew - instead of investing in our children and their futures, the government is squeezing profits out of our young people and adding to the mountain of debt they will spend their lives struggling to repay."

 

Warren and eight other U.S. senators committed to wring government profits out of student loans and address a $1.2 trillion in outstanding student loan debt they say is crushing families and putting a strain on the economy.

 

"We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend the profits don't exist, or use accounting tricks to make them disappear," Warren said. "It's time to end the practice of profiting from young people who are trying to get an education and refinance existing loans."

 

Read the full story here.

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